Christ’s teaching in relation to men as sinners is made abundantly clear in the Four Gospels and elsewhere in Scripture. And this is the infallible guide and example for the Christian Church in every age, and there is no modern teaching or any new attitude to sinners authorised by the Lord for this or any other modern age. Christ Jesus is the same yesterday, today and for ever, and His teaching is the same for the Church as to her witness to sinners in the world. And Christ’s expressed views of sinners is to be the Church’s teaching in all ages. But in these times large sections of the professing Christian Church through their leaders, are bent on flattering sinners and refraining from telling them the truth either as to law or gospel. The Church today largely endeavours to please the natural man and to give him a place in regard to God which certainly does not belong to him as a sinner. Then there are the many instances where the Church compromises with out and out unbelievers and worldlings, providing for them within the realm of the Church, vain and carnal activities and entertainments to draw them into the Church as adherents and members. In other words, the Church has come down to the level of sinners in its teaching and practice to please men and also to conform to the carnal wishes of the world.
What had Christ to say of sinners as such? He exposes the character and the condition of the heart of man as The One who knew the heart of man as none other could. He says: “For out of the heart proceed, evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; These are the things which defile a man . . .” (Matt. xv: 19). Thus sinners are to be taught that their hearts are desperately wicked, and
they are not to be flattered with smooth and false teaching which will only assist to establish their eternal ruin.
The Lord also warns sinners of the evil nature and danger of inordinate worldliness in, for instance, the parable of the rich fool. This rich man so prospered that he pulled down his barns and built greater and there bestowed all his fruits and his goods. Then he said to himself: “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” Then God said to him: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” (Luke xii: 16). Christ here reveals the utter folly of sinners in depending upon material things for personal satisfaction and happiness; inasmuch as death may by the appointment of God remove them in a moment from everything in the world into Eternity, destitute of the true riches of God’s grace in Christ, the Saviour. This solemn lesson sinners need to be instructed in.
Further, Christ makes known again and again His abhorrence of religious hypocrisy to those guilty of the same. Although he was meek and lowly in heart, yet Jesus speaks in stern and revealing terms to the Pharisees, who affected and pretended to be pious and holy in the service of God and were at the same time wicked and evil men. His exposure of their religious hypocrisy includes the following words: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess . . . for ye are like unto whited sepulchres which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (Matt. xxiii: 25, etc.). As is obvious, He does not spare this class of persons, be they men or women in the visible Church. And when such are discovered or reveal themselves in the Church of God, their sin is to be condemned; and sinners are to be warned that a ‘woe’ lies upon them, by the authority of the Lord, if they are acting the part of hypocrites to obtain a place and a name in the Church of God. And there are those today who profess that they know God and in their works deny Him.
Those holding high office in the Church and yet sinners ignorant in their minds and experience of the fundamentals of the faith of the gospel are dealt with by the Lord Jesus Christ faithfully; as in the case of Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a ruler of Jews and a master in Israel. He acknowledged Jesus to be a teacher come from God and that was as far as his appreciation of Jesus went. There are many masters in the Christian Church
today and their opinion of Jesus does not extend beyond that of Nicodemus. They do not accept or believe in His divinity, the sacrificial nature of His death, or in His actual physical resurrection from the dead. Christ confronts Nicodemus with the fact and necessity of the “new birth” by the Spirit in order that a man may enter into the Kingdom of God. And later Jesus exposes to him his spiritual ignorance thus: “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?” (John iii). Sinners may by gifts and natural ability and an inclination towards religion attain to eminence in the Christian Church; but as such reveal their spiritual ignorance of the glory of Christ’s Person and work and the true nature of the Kingdom of God, they are to be viewed as men who need to be “born again.” “Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again” (John iii: 7).
And Christ has this to say concerning sinners to whom the light of the gospel of salvation has come: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John iii: 19). And in the parable of “The great Supper,” the Lord shows how those who were invited to begin with, offered excuses as to why they could not come. And things that were lawful in themselves they turned to evil account, as when one said: “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” In this the Lord warns sinners of the danger and evil of permitting lawful things to come between their precious souls and Himself as “the bread which came down from heaven, which if a man eat, he shall never die.” And when the Jews controverted with the Saviour on one occasion He declared to them “… ye cannot hear my word.” And then he solemnly denounced them in the following words: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do” (John viii: 43-44).
There are many references in Christ’s teaching to the everlasting punishment of those who leave the world without God and without hope and without a believing and saving interest in Himself as the Redeemer of sinners. He said to the Jews, and He says to sinners now: “If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” And to impenitent hypocrites He put the tremendous question: “… how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matt. xxiii: 33). And in describing the transactions of the Day of Judgment, the Lord placed on record that the wicked shall be required to depart from Him into everlasting fire. “These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.” And when the Lord Jesus taught and preached the terrible fact and reality of hell as the eternal abode
of the wicked; it is a duty and obligation upon His servants and Church to teach and preach this truth to sinners and its application to them, unless they repent of their sins and believe the gospel of Christ.
In making the aforesaid selection from the teaching of our Lord in relation to men as sinners, our purpose, in part, is to make clear to our readers in a measure, what the teaching of His Church is to be, and must be, if the Church is to give evidence of unqualified belief in the Word of God. The Lord Jesus Christ was “the faithful witness” in every respect, and in His proclamation of the Truth in relation to sinners and their character, state, conduct and end. The Church is bound to be faithful also in her teaching regarding sinners who are still walking according to the course of this world and without God. To set out to please men is wholly contrary to the function of the Church as a witness to the Truth and is displeasing to God. The Apostle Paul instructed Timothy to “Preach the Word,” and warned him that the time would come when men would not endure sound doctrine. And the Apostle elsewhere observes, “… for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ” (Galatians i: 10).
The limited, vague and downright unscriptural nature of much teaching today concerning man’s relation to God and his moral and spiritual character has deceived many to entertain a false hope of being the children of God. The fundamental truths which point to and mark out clearly the sinnership of man are ignored or explained away; so that there is no distinction made between the unclean and the clean, between the sinner and the saint, the unbeliever and the believer. In fact the view is expressed at times and in certain ways that many of the churchless, irreligious masses are serving God as commendably as many who are acknowledged Christians within the Church. It is a case of the false professor of Christianity and such as the respectable and charitable agnostic being considered on a level as before God, by blind and modern Churchmen, which they are indeed, in the light of Truth, as corrupt and guilty sinners; although, of course, this last view conflicts with the outlook of modernists.
Unless the truth regarding man as a sinner, and as taught by Christ and throughout Scripture, is held forth clearly and faithfully by the Church, the gospel and doctrine of the divine Redeemer, crucified and exalted to the right hand of God, is made void. “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” And “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” (I Tim. i).